


twenty seven club

by pinkgrapefruit



Series: coughing up petals [2]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Implied toxic relationship, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Substance Abuse, implied depression, kinda almost hanahaki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 13:02:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18476788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkgrapefruit/pseuds/pinkgrapefruit
Summary: I learn to recognise the smell of blood with the roses and how despair turns the foxglove a pale blue in the right lighting. How your ribs could grow orchards between them if you weren't so impatient.





	twenty seven club

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ
> 
> Hey! Like most things I write, I started this on a whim and apparently it's okay. I heavily recommend checking the tags because it's a little dark in places. It's written to '27 club' by adore delano and focuses on the relationship between brooke and vanjie. thanks to Q-tip for beta-ing me like the goddess she is and telling me that what I write is mostly not insane. Since I use a lot of flower metaphors there will be a dictionary at the bottom of the page and I in no way intend for this to glorify mental illness or substance abuse. other than that, remember As usual, all work is my own and although this is based on real people, both the characters and the story are my own interpretation and therefore fully fabricated. Enjoy! x

_All of his dreams_

_Are in the fast lane scene_

_These habits go so fast, he can't see_

 

I watch you as you dance. The freedom it gives you, a drug I can never take away. The ribbons bind your legs like a bouquet, all lean orchids, pussywillow and dreams. You smell of coffee and cigarettes like I suppose all dancers do and I inhale your second-hand smoke like it fuels me. Like knowing it was once your air too gives me another reason to stay alive. In reality, it just means that your burdens are my burdens, the likelihood we will both submit to cancer exponentially higher with each lungful I take in. It will fill my windpipe with tar and make footholds of my lungs and I care too much for this _shit_. It will climb me like I used to climb you but as each inhale draws it into my body, it will never have the passion to finish me off.

I pray at the altars of peace and hope, for you to come down off your pedestal and face _me_ for once. I wish that life has not crossed you the way it crossed me for I am more resilient than you. You have crumbled under the weight of your own tutu and I am here only to rebuild what I can. You are more bandaid than flesh these days. Your problems circle you like thunderclouds, rolling in and settling for a week or three as you find your footing. The grey matches the cigarettes and the carpet and your eyes. The tacky residue of the old bandages builds up like moss over time, all the same, stormcloud grey burnished and raw.

Over time the moss turns into foxglove and wormwood and something akin to the flowers my mamma used to grow in the tin cans under the kitchen window. I learn to recognise the smell of blood with the roses and how despair turns the foxglove a pale blue in the right lighting. How your ribs could grow orchards between them if you weren't so impatient. You plant watermelon seeds between your teeth and they crunch when you bite down. The sound they make identical the sound of new pointe shoes when you would break them in on the balcony. You smoke in the rain now, claim _it's not cliche because it makes the flowers grow_. I laugh something hollow and deeply unnatural. The smile you give me scares me. It is deeply unnatural.

 

_Baby lost his mind_

_Nobody gives in time_

_The drugs are worth it_

_Or so it seems_

 

I watch you in the dressing room. I am a drag husband at your gigs and I wait to see whether you need a smoke break or just my attention. It is always the former. Your nails are far enough into the soft flesh of your palms that I can see them compressing beneath the shiny black acrylic. You like this outfit because you don’t have to prune the marigolds from your spine. The way they wove through you like the grief they are supposed to show, unyielding to the weedkiller I slather on liberally every night. As you undress I watch you, their pale yellow shines like moonlight in the old LEDs and it's beautiful. You’re beautiful. And then the main light turns on and I see what everyone else sees and _I am disgusted_ by what I have done. The way I have allowed you to abuse what we both loved will haunt me and I am sorry. The marigolds do not shine like the moon but like a warning sign, bright and clear. Every flower that has inhabited your skeleton calls you a different name, pumps you full of feelings I was never taught about in school because they are not nice to feel. Foxglove for insecurity and wormwood for bitter absence.

I scream but you do not hear me. My vocal cords are entangled in ivy for faithfulness but we must call it what it is. It binds me to my words, keeps me imprisoned in my own body as I try to help to no avail. I watch, as if a spectator, as I fail to find the right words. You see the way I am looking at you, my eyes wet, licked with the pity _I cannot speak_. My tongue is bound by my fear of hurting you but seeing you like this I don't know how that's still a hypothetical. God, everything about you is a hypothetical. I sew your pointe shoes with thorns in the ribbon, in some fucked up part of my head I hope that it will deter you but you feel the pain like burning embers of a fire. You dance upon the coals and it's beautiful but goddamnit Brooke. That's not what I meant to do. This crumbling facade of perfection is about to crack wide open and you will fall like the petals of asphodel.

I hear choirs in your cries. Every sob is a new verse. Every break is the steady hum of the shower.

 

_I’ve been trying and I’ve been buying_

_And I've been lying and I've been crying_

_And that's how I know_

 

Our love isn’t what it used to be, then again neither is the economy so we all have our crosses to bear. What used to be an altar to the powers of love and good food, that which used to burn bright in the temples of our bodies, sputters like a flame choked with fumes. Fumes of whatever it is you burn to keep the demons away. I couldn't say. It smells like losing hope and if that's too poetic for you, it smells like gasoline. Anger. Like how the tears drip down my face at the mention of you, hot and wet like acid. Like the tracks will burn into my skin like brands. Like this is the way it ends with me forever reminded of you, the way you are burned into my skin.

I pray for relief from this fiery hell you’ve built but all I see are the scars of where you tried to claw your way out. The walls mottle ash and dirt bound together by blood pacts and long forgotten promises. I am a long-forgotten promise to you. You choke down Marlboroughs just as often as you cough them back up but these petals are no blue roses, they are red dahlias. Every breath sounds like a betrayal of what we hold close, the noise of the fire louder in my ears than the lighting of your matches. I take Lobelia and put it with orange lily to make a bouquet I would never give because I am not cruel enough for that. Instead, I replace the malevolence with ambrosia and the hatred with hand-picked daisies, add babies breath and cowslip, keep the smile tacked to my face when all my muscles are pulling down. I ignore the vital notion to run in favour of watching you tear yourself apart. I ignore the urge to save myself, _I’d rather save you_.

 

_All of the legends_

_Die at twenty-seven_

_They all went to heaven_

_All of the legends_

 

You have long passed twenty-seven and I am glad because had you not I believe you would have fallen to the same fate. Luckily for me, you are healing. An eglantine rose among a bed of nails, all rusted and ready to impale you at any moment. We stood on the balcony at dawn, watched the sunrise as we mourned the loss of the foxglove, shuffled in the age gladiolus and gorse as the seasons changed around us. Your cigarettes no longer bloom green willow, but mayflower, rustling in the breeze. The menthol doesn't burn my throat as I breathe it in, use my diaphragm as a trampoline to ricochet up my trachea. I bandage your wounds with azaleas, want to grow new hope in old sins, wash away the past and create new memories in the grooves of your ribs.

Some days I watch you dance. You move as though you were never stiffened by the thorn-apple that once locked your joints tight. As if you no longer carry the burden of what we did on your body, old wounds scarred over with white heather. An armour of sorts, holding you up so that you never fall the same way again. When you cough, there are no flowers. Your lungs are clear and happy and you tell me inhaling doesn't taste like witch hazel anymore. The smile on your face is something I could look at for years. Within it, whole worlds could live and die and I’d be none the wiser.

I realise I am in love with the idea of loving you. It drips from my mouth like honey, sweet and sticky. It ensnares and encapsulates and every syllable you utter is trapped within. It feels like a warm summers day but smells like rat poison and I bite back the feeling of falling because I know that when I do it will hurt. Instead, I worship your body like a temple. We rebuild it from the ground up, new foundations to new roofing. The slate is clean and untouched. We wipe the blood from the walls, replace old brick with stone. A symbol of strength and unity. The only thing that grows is honeysuckle. _Neither of us has it in us to worry._

_All of the legends_

_Since I was eleven_

_All went to heaven_

_All of the legends_

 

It’s been months. We lay in a field of sunflowers, the stalks high above our heads. My head is on your chest as we look at the clouds. I know if I felt around I could find the faint scars of wormwood by your hip, overflowing through the pale skin. I don’t dare check. Instead, we lay there calmly, relaxing in each other company. We laugh at the clouds and when the sun gets too hot, we sit beneath a peach tree and feed each other. I watch as the sweet juice, drips down your chin and as I laugh I feel the whispers of aloe catch in my throat. I cough it down and wipe the juice with the pad of my thumb, lingering for a second. We kiss and it burns in my stomach, reigniting the fire that you dampened back when you smoked something heavier and washed it down with whiskey.

When the night gets dark, I walk you home - to our home. We kiss on the doorstep like teens and I laugh as you cannot unlock the door. When I wake up the next morning, the room smells of sex and heliotrope. I ask if we can lay there forever, you just kiss my forehead and pull me closer. I bask in the warmth of your body, allow sleep to wash over me like waves, lapping at the shore. You bury your head in my hair and tell me that I smell like Pomegranate. It is only later that I remember my shampoo is apple.

 

_I’ve been trying and I’ve been buying_

_And I've been lying and I've been crying_

 

The flowers come back. You cough up hibiscus as 3 am, the blood spattering the tiles of the bathroom and you wash the taste away with a Marlborough. ‘For old time sake,’ you tell me as if I don't know what you’re doing. The marshmallow pink mixes with the red to create an unpleasant blush shade that mirrors your chest as you take deep drags. When you stub it out you make vague promises of not doing it again. I call your bluff and you laugh and tell me to ‘come here baby’. When I comply, we kiss and you taste like _almonds and lost causes._

For a moment I could have sworn we were okay.

 

_And that's how I know_

 

A single rainflower left at my doorstep. A quiet kiss on the cheek and you were _gone_.

 

_That I don't wanna go_

**Author's Note:**

> Flower Dictionary  
> Aloe - grief  
> Ambrosia - reciprocated love  
> Azalea - fragile, gratitude, take care  
> Babies breath -innocence, purity  
> Blue Rose - i love you but i can’t have you  
> Cowslip - winning grace  
> Daisies - innocence  
> Eglantine Rose - a wound to heal  
> Foxglove - insecurity  
> Green Willow - false love  
> Gladiolus - strength of character, honour, conviction  
> Gorse - love in all seasons  
> Heliotrope - devotion  
> Hibiscus - delicate beauty  
> Honeysuckle - bonds of love  
> Ivy - faithfulness  
> Lobelia - malevolence  
> Marigold - pain and grief  
> Orange Lily - hatred  
> Orchid - refined beauty  
> Peach - immortality  
> Pomegranate - hell/ the underworld  
> Pussy Willow - goodwill  
> Rainflower - i love you back, i must atone for my sins, i will never forget you  
> Red Dahlia - betrayal and dishonesty  
> Sunflower - loyalty, longevity  
> White Heather - protection
> 
> *
> 
> I really hope you enjoyed it! if you've got any feedback/ constructive criticism you can catch me in the comments here or over on tumblr @pink-grapefruit-cafe. I love you all and your feedback truly motivates me to keep writing xx


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